If you want the game recap, go read the live blog. It’ll only take you an hour, I swear. Anyway, onto the WPA analysis.

The consensus is that Carl Pavano didn’t pitch too poorly, and I tend to agree with that, though WPA does not. He ended up with -.222 for the game, meaning he took the Yankees 20 percent further away from a win. The Upton single in the second hurt a bit, costing him .115. This is where WPA gets very tough, though; I had already debited Jeter for the error that allowed Iwamura to reach base. Do I further debit him for the run he eventually scored?

The Dukes homer cost him another .103, though the Baldelli single was his worst pitch of the day, putting him a further .128 in the hole.

The Yanks picked him up later, though. The biggest gain of the game was — big surprise — Jeter’s two-run single to tie the game (.189). Giambi singling home Alex to take the lead was .118, and that was all the Yanks would need. For sealing the game, Abreu and Alex received .059 and .037, respectively.

Farnsworth headed up the pitching end of the WPA, racking up a total of .120 (it’s easy to calculate relievers). For Vizcaino’s effortless outing, he was credited .089.

A regular features with the WPA graphs last year was a table listing each player’s contribution for the game. Unfortunately, it is just not going to happen this year. I’ve had to switch from the excellent spreadsheet that Dave Studeman from Baseball Graphs and The Hardball Times created to Walk Off Bunt’s WPA calculator. Scoring the game isn’t a ton harder (a few formulas in Excel does the trick), but I’m not nearly advanced enough to have everything sorted by player. If I find someone with the know-how and the time to develop a simple Excel program to help me out, maybe they’ll return. But for now, we’ll just go with the biggest plays of the game and other little tidbits.

The problem about Opening Day, as Steve illustrated earlier, is that most of us are at work and cannot view the proceedings. Thankfully for me, and now thankfully for you, I’ll be watching the game from the comfort of my living room couch.

Keep checking back for updates. I’ll try to be as detailed as possible.

Top of the 1st
Here comes the first pitch..juuuust a bit outside, ball one, and the season is underway. The rollcall is BOOMING from the right field bleachers, quite the warming sound. And there’s Crawford, slapping a single between Jeter and A-Rod to open the season with a hit.

Pavano opens with a strike this time to Zobrist. Four pitches, and they’ve all looked in or close to the zone. Ball one on another close pitch; Crawford was moving, but Jorge couldn’t make the transfer. Good 3-2 pitch by Pavano, in on the hands of Zobrist. He fouled it off to stay alive; the pitch, on the YES gun, was 92…STRIKE THREE SWINGING! Fastball tailing away, 91 on the inflated gun.

Another first pitch strike, this time to Rocco Baldelli, DHing today. Deeeeep fly on the second pitch. Matsui tracked it down on the warning track; Crawford advanced to third.

And the boo bird come out early. On the first pitch, Ty Wiggington popped one sky-high in foul territory by third base. Alex — with the socks hiked — misplayed it, so we’re at 0-1. Wiggington dinked one back to Pavano, over to Phelps and that ends the half-inning. One hit, one error, no runs.

Bottom of the 1st
First pitch strike from Kazmir to Damon. Damon answers Crawford by slapping one between Upton and Wiggington for a leadoff single.

Low and in to Jeter (looked like a slider), 1-0. Line drive foul (out of play) to the first base side. Jete inside outs one to right field; Delmon Young moves into the corner, makes the catch, one down.

Here’s Bobby Abreu, who takes the first pitch at the bottom of the zone for strike one. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t even think about swinging at that. Good heater on the low outside corner, moving the count to 0-2. Kazmir wastes one in the dirt, 1-2. Well outside, 2-2. Gotta love Abreu’s approach. Line drive to left, base hit for Abreu. Damon only moves to second.

And they’re going crazy for Alex Rodriguez! First and second, one out. A hit here will certainly leave a favorable impression. In the dirt for ball one, as the Yankee fans chant “Let’s Go A-Rod.” I’m loving this! Low in the zone for strike one. Way inside for ball two. I can’t say enough (and Mike agrees) how much I love the hiked socks. High strike that had Alex locked up a bit, 2-2. Inside, 3-2. Good at bat by A-Rod. He took every pitch so far, and the strikes were borderline. Ah, nuts. Strikeout on a low and away pitch. A little booing, but as I said, it was a good at bat. Double steal on the play, so we have second and third with two outs.

Giambi’s up, and quickly takes a strike, followed by two out of the zone. Way low and out, 3-1. So you either walk Giambi or give him something to crush. Liner to center! Two runs score! Yanks up 2-0!

Inside to Matsui, 1-0. In the dirt, 2-0. Girardi just suggested that Kazmir should have thrown a slider on 3-1 to try and get Giambi to swing and miss. Easy to say that in hindsight. Outside, 3-0. D’oh! Hideki pounds a probably ball four into the dirt foul, 3-1. Fastball on the low outside corner, 3-2. Heh, Giambi’s going with the pitch. Doesn’t he look like a cartoon when he runs? Fouled off to the left side. Low and inside, ball four to Matsui. First and second, two outs.

Jim Hickey, Devil Rays pitching coach, is out to the mound to counsel the troubled-looking Kazmir. Mike notes that he looks lost out there. Low, 1-0 to Posada. Swing and a miss by Jorge on a pitch outside, 1-1. Way outside, 2-1. Big swing and a miss on another pitch reasonably outside, 2-2. Popped up behind first, Upton has it, and we’re done with the first. 2-0 Yanks, baby![Read more…]

The landscape of the Yanks’ farm system has changed pretty dramatically since last season, thanks to some crafty wheeling and dealing on Cash Money‘s part. Â The Sheff and Unit deals landed the Yanks a total ofÂ 6 prospects (5 pitchers), all but one of whom jump right into my Top 30. It’s not all good news though, as elbow troubles have set back the careers of 3 of the Yanks’ most promising young arms: Christian Garcia,Â Mark Melancon, and most recently, JB Cox.

I had planned on giving a scouting report for each player, but Fabian of RLYW and EJ of Pending Pinstripes/Pinstripes Potentials have already done that this offseason, so I’m not going to regurgitate that info. Instead, I’m just going to tell you what I think about the kid. Even though he technically is a rookie and a prospect, I didn’t include Kei Igawa because of his experience in Japan. In case you’re wondering, I would have ranked him #9.Â

In order to cover my ass, I’ll go ahead and say that I think this is a post-April Fool’s joke. But Dave Pinto at Baseball Musings is reporting that Curt Schilling was grazed by a side-view mirror of an SUV. His source is a radio bit. There is no further information. Stay tuned for any developments.

Update: Of course, it’s a hoax. Only a moronic Bostonian would pull an April Fool’s joke the day after.

Who’s ready for some Opening Day baseball? We at River Ave. Blues sure as hell are. There is nothing more pleasing than knowing that we’ve just begun seven months of baseball.

Hopefully, this nerdy and math-related concept won’t ruin the mood. Anyone familiar with my old blog, The Sporting Brews, is also familiar with Win Expectancy (or Win Probability Added [WPA], which is how I’m referring to it this season, because WPA is a better acronym than WE). For those of you unfamiliar, I’ll give the short short version.

In any given situation during the game, a team has a certain probability of winning. This is determined by the inning, score, runners on base, and outs. The probability of winning in each situation is determined by using historical data. That is, it looks at all games in MLB history in which any situation occurred and finds out what percentage of the time the home team won. For example, if the Yankees are up 1-0 in the top of the fourth, with Tampa Bay having runners on first and third with no outs, the WPA calculator goes back and searches for all games where the home team was up by one run in the fourth with runners on first and third with no outs. It then spits out the percentage of the time the home team wins. That would be the Yankees WPA at that given moment.

Individual players are debited and credited WPA, too. If Carl Pavano surrenders a home run in that situation, his WPA score changes based on the difference between the aforementioned WPA (up one run, fourth inning, first and third, no outs — 51.1%, incidentally) and the WPA that resulted from the play (27.8 percent): -23.3. If, say, Pavano induces a DP, but the runner scores, the WPA would change from 51.1% to 58.5%, meaning Carl would be credited 7.4%.

That may seem strange to some of you. After all, Tampa Bay just tied the score. How is it that the home team has a better chance of winning the game when they no longer have the lead? I could go into minute details, like the fact that they just took away two of Tampa Bay’s precious 27 outs, as well as two out of their super-precious three at a time. And I could mention how since 1977 that the home team has won 54 percent of the time, and that increases to 59 percent if they set the visiting team down without scoring in the first. But let’s cut to the chase.

There have been 8,109 games since 1977 in which the visiting team was batting in the fourth with two outs, the bases empty, and the score tied. Of those, the home team won 4,765, hence the 58.8 percent chance that the home team wins.

Yes, I understand that WPA isn’t a flawless system, as it doesn’t take into consideration who is at bat, who is on the mound, and who are the specific men on base. However, it does offer us an excellent historical perspective as to what the chances are during each game situation that your team wins. It’s also accompanied by a graph, sometimes filled with pictures or a bit of snark:

The graph, of course, tracks the Yankees chances of winning throughout the game. At this point, unfortunately, I don’t have the Excel savvy to mark each inning. I’ll work on it, though. Plus, I normally point out the bigger plays within the graph.

Questions? I know there must be questions out there. If so, leave ’em in the comments section, or e-mail me: RABJosephP (at) gmail (dot) com.